Dozens of Range Resources well sites were recently listed out of compliance with state environmental laws and, in some cases, it took state regulators years to record the violations.

The same violation - failure to clean up a site within 9 months of drilling a well - was noted for all 44 sites inspected through an administrative review, according to Department of Environmental Protection records.

Range Resources did not respond to requests seeking comment and has not responded to questions from PennLive since Oct. 16 - three days before the website published a series that revealed DEP's regulatory failures during the oil and gas boom.

Some of the same problems outlined in that series are evident in the latest round of infractions.

"A few of the sites should have been restored in 2012, but most of the violations began in 2014 and 2015," department spokesman Neil Shader said in an email Monday evening.

The violations were recorded after an administrative file review. The review was triggered by the company's response to a question asked last summer.

DEP on June 26 sent a letter to all unconventional oil and gas operators that fracked into the Marcellus and Utica shale regions of Pennsylvania. The letter requested those operators to provide a status update on the restoration of each well site.

Range Resources responded to the request in August and has met with officials in DEP's Southwest Regional Office several times regarding the restoration of its well sites, Shader said.

Meanwhile, a search performed on DEP's online database shows all of the locations recently cited were found without violations during their most recent inspections, including a routine inspection on Feb. 4 at one of the sites.

Four sites were inspected without violations in January. Another 15 sites were inspected since DEP sent the letter in June, and all were found to have no violations.

A public record of any violation wasn't recorded until Friday, and no fines have been issued.

"No formal enforcement has been taken at this point," Shader said.

DEP waits until a site has been completely cleaned up before calculating the total days of the violation. Each day a site isn't restored is considered a new violation and can yield a new penalty amount.

But it's unclear if Range will face any monetary penalty at all.

The agency's southwest office will continue to work with Range to gain compliance at the 44 well sites, Shader said.

As of Monday evening, DEP had not documented any offsite environmental impact of the violations.

The only impact is the presence of a larger well site than what is needed for production, Shader said.

Oil and gas operators typically need a larger area and more equipment to drill and complete a well than they need once a well is in production.

The state's Oil and Gas Act requires an operator to remove certain equipment and reduce the size of their footprint within 9 months of completing a well.

That site restoration wasn't completed by Range and that's why DEP last week sent the company those official Notices of Violation.

Range Resources has been cited by DEP multiple times since September 2014 - two months before the Wolf administration took office. Nearly all of the citations reveal the company had been out of compliance with state environmental laws for years before state regulators issued fines.

For example, the $4.15 million fine in September 2014 was for environmental violations that began in 2009.

In June, DEP issued a record $8.9 million fine to Range for a well leaking methane into nearby water supplies in Lycoming County - a violation first noted in 2013.

As part of the September 2014 fine, the agency told the company to close five impoundments and upgrade two others to state standards. Cleanup is still ongoing.

Range was operating one of those impoundments without a state permit, DEP records show.

At another Washington County site in 2011, Range flushed a drill cuttings pit in without permission and contaminated 700 tons of soil. That pit was closed with contamination still in place, according to court records.

Ongoing violations give DEP the right to deny permits, according to the Oil and Gas Act, but the agency has not taken such action against Range.

"Range Resources has voluntarily complied with responding to our request for information and is actively working with the department to identify and correct any compliance issues," Shader said. "Failure to comply with the department's well site restoration regulations could result in additional actions."

Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.